A few months ago, a resident of Brazil had more than $34,000 worth of bitcoin (BTC) stolen from his Binance account. But far from claiming the platform, he filed a lawsuit against the Claro telephone company alleging that his chip was cloned.
The case, which was reported by the Brazilian magazine LiveCoins, began in December last year when suddenly The Claro mobile line of the affected cell phone stopped working. When this happened, the man made the relevant claim to customer service. And after a few days they made a portability giving him a new phone number in a physical store of the company.
But when everything seemed to have been resolved, he realized something unexpected. Los bitcoins that you had in your Binance account were not. He noticed that someone with a mobile device located in the city of Sao Paulo had cloned his chip and withdrawn all his funds from the cryptocurrency platform, which was more than $34,000 worth of BTC.
He explains that his chip was cloned, enabled on another device, and used to steal his bitcoins. Indicates that the hacker was able to access your Binance account through the SMS password recovery that the platform allows.
This type of scam is known as SIM swapping or chip duplication. It consists of someone making a duplicate of a cell phone SIM card to receive the code that the platforms send by SMS to confirm an operation. This way, the scammer can get into your personal accounts and withdraw your money.
Faced with this situation, the user sued Claro in the Court of Justice of the Federal District in Brazil. It alleges that there was a failure in the provision of the service that caused great harm to the bitcoin investor. He requested that the company reimburse him USD 10,000 for moral damages.
Claro denied the accusation, but the court asked him to prove that he did not facilitate the bitcoin fraud
In response to the demand, Claro denied the request claiming that it is not to blame for the fraud that occurred in Binance and asked to be excluded from the process. However, the court judge did not agree with the company’s statements and asked that it prove that it is not responsible for the lack of provision of the service.
Thus, the case is still open. Claro must prove that it did not facilitate the fraud, while Binance has not received any lawsuit from the affected party. Although during the last year other users in Latin America, such as Colombia and Venezuela, have initiated legal action against the platform for different bitcoin losses reported by CriptoNoticias.
This situation demonstrates the importance that cryptocurrency holders and traders should give to the security measures of their funds. As explained in the Cryptopedia, it is always convenient to store cryptocurrencies in self-custody wallets out of the exchanges to avoid situations like these.